Research News

National organizations honor UB professor's innovative psychiatric program for children

By ELLEN GOLDBAUM

“The CAP PC program represents a lifetime of working toward the integration of physical and mental health, which has been in my heart from the beginning of medical school.”

David Kaye, professor

Department of Psychiatry

A program directed by UB psychiatrist David L. Kaye is receiving national recognition this month from the American Psychiatric Association (APA) and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP).

With funding from the New York State Office of Mental Health as part of Project TEACH, Kaye developed the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry for Primary Care (CAP PC) program in 2010 to address New York State’s critical shortage of child and adolescent psychiatrists in a cost-effective way. CAP PC provides assistance to primary care providers for their pediatric patients with mild to moderate mental health problems.

It has so far provided consultation support for more than 7,000 pediatric patients throughout New York. Nearly 2,000 primary care providers have registered for the program, a number that continues to grow at an annual average of 15 percent.

The ‘most common problem’

“Many primary care providers tell us that mental health issues are their biggest and most common problem,” says Kaye, a professor in the Department of Psychiatry, Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. “The whole goal of CAP PC is to try and help primary care providers develop competence and feel confident about assessing and managing their patients’ mild to moderate mental health issues.”

In recognition of the program, the APA awarded Kaye its Psychiatric Services Bronze Achievement Award on Oct. 19 at the APA Institute for Psychiatric Services’ annual meeting in New Orleans. The highly competitive award is given annually to recognize creative models of service delivery and innovative programs for people with mental illness or disabilities.

And several days later on Oct. 25, Kaye received AACAP’s 2017 Norbert and Charlotte Rieger Service Program Award for Excellence at the academy’s 64th annual meeting in Washington, D.C., where he presented “Improving Primary Care Access and Quality of Care for Children with Mental Health Needs: The CAP PC Experience.”

The AACAP award recognizes innovative programs that address prevention, diagnosis or treatment of mental illnesses in children and adolescents, and serve as model programs for the country. The award is shared among the awardee and his or her service program. It was established in 1996 and is supported by the Norbert and Charlotte Rieger Foundation.

Statewide collaboration

UB collaborates on CAP PC with four other university-based child psychiatry divisions — Columbia University Medical Center, Hofstra Northwell Health, University of Rochester and SUNY Upstate Medical University — to provide real-time psychiatric phone consultations for primary care providers and assist with referral linkages. The program also emphasizes formal education for primary care providers and has been the largest provider of continuing medical education of any child psychiatric access program in the country.

“The CAP PC program represents a lifetime of working toward the integration of physical and mental health, which has been in my heart from the beginning of medical school,” Kaye says.

Currently vice chair for academic affairs in the Department of Psychiatry, Kaye established UB’s residency training program in child/adolescent psychiatry and served as director of training from 1986-2014. A Distinguished Fellow of AACAP and a Distinguished Life Fellow of the APA, he is a past president of the American Association of Directors of Psychiatric Residency Training.

Kaye sees patients through UBMD Psychiatry. His work has focused on psychiatric education; he is first author on a book for primary care physicians, “Child and Adolescent Mental Health” (Lippincott, Williams and Wilkins 2002).